The shortcut to healing

Stop right there.

If you really want a shortcut to healing, you are not going to like what I have to say.

There is no shortcut.

Inspirational memes and blogs would have us believe that the secret to healing is to ‘let it go’.

I have seen it written in a number of ways recently — rise from the ashes like a phoenix, stand under the glow of the moonlight like the warrior you are, fuck that shit and live happily ever after…

Heck even I shared this on my Facebook page yesterday –

There is no denying these statements have a lot of flair and motivation; but no matter how profound it sounds, I can’t help but feeling they skip over a huge step — the ‘ugly middle’.

Simply saying ‘let it go’ is not sound advice and has no practical depth for someone in the middle of their struggle.

But who wants to read — ‘How to heal yourself and your life in 12 short months or even years?

No one.

We live in a fast-paced, instant world, where most everything we can think of is available at our fingertips. Waiting for a train in London for more than 3 minutes is unacceptable, love stories unfold before our very eyes on the screen in 2 hours and the most popular blog posts have titles such as 3 Easy steps to make him fall in love with you, 14-day beach body, 30 days to success…

I’m not mocking, we’re all guilty.

I’m just saying that in real life there is no such thing as an instant-anything. If anything is worth having we have to work for it — relationships, career, health and yes — healing.

What few are willing to say and even less are willing to hear — is that the healing process can take years. Healing is not linear, nor is it instantaneous. It is a process.

It takes time to feel out all of the sharp, raw, jagged edges of the pieces we try to put back together when we fall apart; and we need that time if we are going to put ourselves back together whole.

I spent years, working through my ‘stuff’, letting shit go, but in actual fact, I was running from and denying a lot of my demons (kinda like Elsa).

Think of the child who burns his hand on the fireplace. It is a hard and painful lesson to learn, but almost instantly, that knowledge is integrated through cause and effect. I touched the fireplace, I got burnt, I won’t do that again.

This is the physical equivalent of healing. Except if we don’t acknowledge what caused us pain, we will most likely burn ourselves time again.

Nothing is ever learned by accident. Everything we learn is through experience, reflection and integration. If we just ‘let it go’, we are skipping the last 2 steps.

Even ‘nuggets of wisdom’ or ‘uh-huh’ moments don’t teach us anything we didn’t already know. All that’s happened is the information has finally made its way from our subconscious to our conscious mind.

Think back to the last brilliant piece of advice you read, the one that really clicked.

Now what did you do with that?

Did you just take it on board because it spoke the ultimate truth? Or did you take it in and set it against the backdrop of your own experiences to see how it matched?

I can guarantee it was the latter.

All of life is learning through experience. There are parts of our lives that we’d rather forget, but all parts of ourselves, even the really crappy parts — create the whole.

Is this not healing?

Committing to making ourselves feel whole again?

The ugly truth about healing is — not only does it take time, but it takes work, commitment and a hell of a lot of vulnerability.

True freedom from our struggles comes when we bravely stand and face them head on — once we acknowledge them for what they are, then we can integrate this knowledge and acceptance into our being and then… we can let it go.

It is painful to face some truths, but it is even more painful to keep burning ourselves with our past, or living in fear of the world around us.

So don’t just let it go. Be brave, dig deep, question everything. Healing won’t happen overnight, but I guarantee, if you lean into this discomfort — it will happen (which is almost a shortcut) …

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